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Published: June 22, 2011
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The Global Aquaculture Alliance, a leading standards-setting organization for farmed seafood, recently announced that it has expanded its Best Aquaculture Practices certification program with the completion of BAP standards for salmon farms.

The BAP standards for salmon farms apply to the cage and net pen production of salmon and rainbow trout. They join BAP's standards for shrimp, tilapia, Pangasius and channel catfish. The  BAP program also includes standards for feed mills, hatcheries and processing plants. Over 1.5 billion pounds (700,000 metric tons) of seafood are processed under the BAP program annually.

BAP is now open to salmon farmers and processors, and is working with certification bodies to develop auditor guidelines for the new standards. An August BAP auditor course in Ireland will emphasize the salmon standards.

The BAP Standards Oversight Committee (SOC), whose members represent a balance of stakeholders from industry, NGOs and academia, unanimously approved the standards for implementation. The salmon standards were initially drafted by a technical committee under the chairmanship of aquaculture scientist and consultant John Forster. The standards were then redrafted following input from the public review process, finalized and approved by the SOC and GAA board.

The BAP standards are based on current best practices, but continuously evolve with advancing technology. BAP strives to set standards at an achievable level to encourage a broad cross section of producers to participate and effect positive changes within the industry.

The standards can be viewed at www.gaalliance.org/cmsAdmin/uploads/BAP-SalmonF-611.pdf

Public comments and responses are also available at www.gaalliance.org/bap/comments.php

For more information on BAP, visit www.gaalliance.org/bap/

source: GAA

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